Transmute

Transmute
Info
Cost
Type(s)	Action
Kingdom card?	Yes
Set	Alchemy
Illustrator(s)	Claus Stephan
Card text
Trash a card from your hand. If it is an… Action card, gain a Duchy Treasure card, gain a Transmute Victory card, gain a Gold

Transmute is an Action card from Alchemy. It is a trash for benefit card which turns Actions into Victory cards, Victory cards into Treasures, and Treasures into Actions. However, since the cards it gives you are fixed (Duchy, Gold, and Transmute itself), it has limited utility.

FAQ

Official FAQ

• If you trash a Curse to this, you do not get anything.
• If you trash a card with more than one type to this, you get each applicable thing. For example if you trash an Action-Victory card (such as Nobles, from Dominion: Intrigue), you gain both a Duchy and a Gold.

Other Rules clarifications

• If you Transmute an Estate under the influence of Inheritance, you will gain a Gold (for trashing a Victory card) and a Duchy (for trashing an Action card).

Strategy

Transmute is generally considered one of the weakest cards in the game. For many players, it is a fun exercise to try to come up with cases where gaining a Transmute might be playable in theory; it is very rarely playable in practice. Transmute’s cost both makes it hard to gain and adds a junk card in the Potion to your deck. Your reward for paying that cost is a card whose effect on play is rarely useful: in particular, it generally is not a source of thinning, since using it on most cards will gain a stop card.

A few cases where it might be usable in theory are:

• It can be used as a thinner of last resort to handle Curses, since it does not gain a card when trashing a Curse, especially in games with Familiar where you already have a Potion.
• It can enable some effects that care about trashing such as Tomb or Sewers.
• Turning treasures into Transmutes works with cards that interact with Actions such as Scrying Pool or City Quarter. Excess Transmutes can then be turned into Duchies to score in the endgame. Ways such as Way of the Horse are similarly a possible reason to gain Transmute.

External strategy articles

Note: Article(s) below are by individual authors and may not represent the community's current views on cards, but may provide more in-depth information or give historical perspective. Caveat emptor.

• chwhite's 2012 article

Versions

English versions

Print	Digital	Text	Release	Date
		Trash a card from your hand. If it is an… Action card, gain a Duchy Treasure card, gain a Transmute Victory card, gain a Gold	Alchemy 1st Edition	May 2010
		Trash a card from your hand.       If it's an… Action card, gain a Duchy Treasure card, gain a Transmute Victory card, gain a Gold	Alchemy 2nd Edition	December 2018

Other language versions

Language	Name	Print	Digital	Text	Notes
Chinese	煉成 (pron. liàn chéng)
Czech	Přeměna
Dutch	Transformatie
Finnish	Transmutaatio
French	Transmutation			Écartez une care de votre main. Si c'est une carte… Action, recevez un Duché Trésor, recevez une Transmutation Victoire, recevez un Or
German	Verwandlung			Entsorge eine deiner Handkarten. Ist es eine… Aktionskarte: nimm ein Herzogtum. Geldkarte: nimm eine Verwandlung. Punktekarte: nimm ein Gold.	(2019)
Italian	Trasmutazione
Japanese	変成 (pron. hensei, lit. metamorphosis)			手札1枚を廃棄する。それが... アクションカードの場合、公領1枚を獲得する 財宝カードの場合、変成1枚を獲得する 勝利点カードの場合、金貨1枚を獲得する (複数該当する場合、順に実行する)
Polish	Transmutacja				Although Polish version is not released, this name is referred to in Polish Dominion 2E rulebook.
Russian	Превращение (pron. pryevrashshyeniye)			Выкиньте карту из руки. Если это была карта… Действия,   получите Герцогство  Сокровища, получите Преващение Победы,    получите Золото
Spanish	Transmutar			Elimina una carta de tu mano. Si se trata de una carta... de Acción, gana una carta de Ducado; de Tesoro, gana una carta Transmutar; de Victoria, gana una carta de Oro.

Trivia

Official card art.

Preview

Yes, if you Transmute a Great Hall, you get both a Duchy and a Gold. And a Curse doesn't turn into anything. At least you get rid of it.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion: Alchemy Preview

Secret History

This slot started out with a Remodel variant that was like the middle ground between two other Remodel variants that hope one day to come out. It seemed like it must be too close to one or the other, so I replaced it with this exotic Remodel. After that the only change to this one was dropping from to . When the card images were made, the question came up, should this (and Vineyard) have a on it or what? I had never had the . My feeling is, if there's no cost to a card at all, you need a where the cost is, to make it clear that you mean for the card to be free. If there's a cost, you don't need that. Transmute has a cost: a potion. It didn't need a too. Anyway we looked at it both ways and both Jay and I preferred it with no and so no it was.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, The Secret History of the Alchemy Cards

Donald X. on "fixing" Transmute

Arguably Exorcist is the fixed version. The premise is a Remodel that gives you specific cards. For a card called Transmute in an expansion called Alchemy, Dismantle would do the trick.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Fix the worst cards

The biggest thing for Transmute is that needing a Potion delays it too much (and hey, also means you got a Potion instead of a better thing, and now have this Potion - it's a lot of penalty). Sacrifice is the fixed version; it doesn't gain cards but you know, it trashes and does something based on card type. And you can open with it, hooray.

—Donald X. Vaccarino, Dominion Discord, 2019